[Members of the Assyrian diaspora have called for international intervention, and on Thursday, warplanes of the United States-led coalition struck targets in the area, suggesting that the threat to a minority enclave had galvanized a reaction, as a similar threat did in the Kurdish city of Kobani last year.]
By Anne Barnard
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An ISIS video showed the
destruction of ancient Assyrian artifacts in Mosul, Iraq.
Credit -/Agence
France-Presse — Getty Images
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ISTANBUL — The reports are like
something out of a distant era of ancient conquests: entire villages emptied,
with hundreds taken prisoner, others kept as slaves; the destruction of
irreplaceable works of art; a tax on religious minorities, payable in gold.
A rampage reminiscent of
Tamerlane or Genghis Khan, perhaps, but in reality, according to reports by
residents, activist groups and the assailants themselves, a description of the
modus operandi of the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate this week. The
militants have prosecuted a relentless campaign in Iraq and Syria against what
have historically been religiously and ethnically diverse areas with traces of
civilizations dating to ancient Mesopotamia.
The latest to face the
militants’ onslaught are the Assyrian Christians of northeastern Syria,
one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, some speaking a modern version
of Aramaic, the language of Jesus.
Assyrian leaders have
counted 287 people taken captive, including 30 children and several dozen
women, along with civilian men and fighters from Christian militias, said
Dawoud Dawoud, an Assyrian political activist who had just toured the area, in
the vicinity of the Syrian city of Qamishli. Thirty villages had been emptied,
he said.
The Syriac Military
Council, a local Assyrian militia, put the number of those taken at 350.
Reached in Qamishli, Adul
Ahad Nissan, 48, an accountant and music composer who fled his village before
the brunt of the fighting, said a close friend and his wife had been captured.
“I used to call them
every other day. Now their mobile is off,” he said. “I tried and tried. It’s so
painful not to see your friends again.”
Members of the Assyrian
diaspora have called for international intervention, and on Thursday, warplanes
of the United States-led coalition struck targets in the area, suggesting that
the threat to a minority enclave had galvanized a reaction, as a similar threat
did in the Kurdish city of Kobani last year.
The assault on the
Assyrian communities comes amid battles for a key crossroads in the area. But
to residents, it also seems to be part of the latest effort by the Islamic State
militants to eradicate or subordinate anyone and anything that does not comport
with their vision of Islamic rule — whether a minority sect that has survived
centuries of conquerors and massacres or, as the world was reminded on
Thursday, the archaeological traces of pre-Islamic antiquity.
An Islamic State video showed the militants
smashing statues with sledgehammers inside the Mosul Museum, in
northern Iraq, that showcases recent archaeological finds from the ancient
Assyrian empire. The relics include items from the palace of King Sennacherib,
who in the Byron poem “came down like the wolf on the fold” to destroy his
enemies.
“A tragedy and
catastrophic loss for Iraqi history and archaeology beyond comprehension,” Amr
al-Azm, the Syrian anthropologist and historian, called the destruction on his
Facebook page.
“These are some of the
most wonderful examples of Assyrian art, and they’re part of the great history
of Iraq, and of Mesopotamia,” he said in an interview. “The whole world has
lost this.”
Islamic State militants
seized the museum — which had not yet opened to the public — when they took
over Mosul in June and have repeatedly threatened to destroy its collection.
In the video, put out by
the Islamic State’s media office for Nineveh Province — named for an ancient
Assyrian city — a man explains, “The monuments that you can see behind me are
but statues and idols of people from previous centuries, which they used to worship
instead of God.”
A message flashing on the
screen read: “Those statues and idols weren’t there at the time of the Prophet
nor his companions. They have been excavated by Satanists.”
The men, some bearded and
in traditional Islamic dress, others clean-shaven in jeans and T-shirts, were
filmed toppling and destroying artifacts. One is using a power tool to deface a
winged lion much like a pair on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York.
The Islamic State, also
known as ISIS or ISIL, has presented itself as a
modern-day equivalent of the conquering invaders of Sennacherib’s day, or as
Islamic zealots smashing relics out of religious conviction.
Yet in the past, the
militants have veered between ideology and pragmatism in their relationship to
antiquity — destroying historic mosques, tombs and artifacts that they consider
forms of idolatry, but also selling more portable objects to fill their
coffers.
The latest eye-catching
destruction could have a more strategic aim, said Mr. Azm, who closely follows
the Syrian conflict and opposes both the Islamic State and the government.
“It’s all a provocation,”
he said, aimed at accelerating a planned effort, led by Iraqi forces and backed
by United States warplanes, to take back Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.
“They want a fight with
the West because that’s how they gain credibility and recruits,” Mr. Azm said.
“They want boots on the ground. They want another Falluja,” a reference to the
2004 battle in which United States Marines, in the largest ground engagement
since Vietnam, took that Iraqi city from Qaeda-linked insurgents whose
organization would eventually give birth to the Islamic State.
The Islamic State has
been all-inclusive in its violence against the modern diversity of Iraq and
Syria. It considers Shiite Muslims apostates, and has destroyed Shiite shrines
and massacred more than 1,000 Shiite Iraqi soldiers. It has demanded that
Christians living in its territories pay the jizya, a tax on religious
minorities dating to early Islamic rule.
Islamic State militants
have also slaughtered fellow Sunni Muslims who reject their rule, killing
hundreds of members of the Shueitat tribe in eastern Syria in
one clash alone. They have also massacred and enslaved members of the Yazidi
sect in Iraq.
The latest to face its
wrath, the Assyrian Christians, consider themselves the descendants of the
ancient Assyrians and have survived often bloody Arab, Mongolian and Ottoman
conquests, living in modern times as a small minority community periodically
under threat. Thousands fled northern Iraq last year as Islamic State militants
swept into Nineveh Province.
Early in February,
according to Assyrian groups inside and outside Syria, came a declaration from
the Islamic State that Christians in a string of villages along the Khabur
River in Syrian Hasaka Province would have to take down their crosses and pay
the jizya, traditionally paid in gold.
That prompted some to
flee, and others to take a more active part in fighting ISIS alongside Kurdish militias, helping
take back some territory.
Islamic State militants
hit back, hard, driving more than 1,000 Assyrian Christians from their homes,
some crossing the Khabur River, a tributary of the Euphrates, in small boats by
night.
Local Assyrian leaders
were negotiating with the Islamic State through mediators, said Mr. Dawoud, the
deputy president of the Assyrian Democratic Organization. The Assyrian
International News Agency, a website sharing community news, said Arab tribal leaders
were mediating talks to exchange the prisoners for captured Islamic State
fighters and that the Islamic State had agreed to free Christian civilians but
not fighters.
Mr. Nissan, the
accountant, described how he and others crammed into a truck, paying exorbitant
rates, to escape. Earlier, he said, Nusra Front fighters and other Syrian
insurgents had looted the village without harming anyone, but he feared ISIS
more because “they consider us infidels.”
“I made a vow, when I
return I want to kiss the soil of my village and pray in the church,” he said,
adding that he had composed a song for the residents of Nineveh Province when
they were displaced a few months ago.
“I called it ‘Greetings
from Khabur to Nineveh,’ “ he said. “Now we’re facing the same scenario.”
Hwaida Saad and Maher
Samaan contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, and Karen Zraick from New
York.
